
Class 
Book 



SONG-SURF 



CALE YOUNG RICE 



THE LYRIC LIBRARY 




BOSTON 
Richard G badger & Company 

(Incorporated) 
I 9 o I 



COPYRIGHT 1900 BY 

,RD G BADGEl 
(Incorporated) 






RICHARD G BADGER & CO j O A I 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



605163 

FEB 1 7 1941 



: TO MY SISTERS 

t — ? 

With memories of our Mother 



C. Y. R. 



CONTENTS 

Song, 9 

Jael, 9 

Live, 13 

By the Indus, 14 

From Above, 15 

The Dead Gods, 16 

To a Rose, 19 

A Longing for the Sea, 20 

The Ramble, 21 

From One Blind, 24 

The Winds, 24 

Mother Love, 26 

The Day Moon, 27 

August Guest, 28 

Uncrowned, 29 

Love's Way to Childhood, 30 

The Fight with Fate, 30 

Transcended, 31 

Tearless, 32 

To the Nightingale, 33 

Love Call in Spring, 34 

World Sorrow, 35 

To Her Who Shall come, 37 

The Atoner, 42 

Seeming, 42 

Intimation, 43 

The Degenerate, 44 

Serenity, 45 



Changed, 46 

Autumn, 47 

Written in Hell, 47 

With Omar, 50 

Love Has Come, 59 

In July, 60 

Eve, 61 

Where Peace is Duty, 64 

Silence, 64 

The World-Weaver, 65 

Lingering, 66 

One Came to God's Eight Hand, 67 

The Child God Gave, 68 

Wanda, 69 

Maiy, 71 

Worlds, 73 

Oh When She Comes, 74 

Wildings, 75 

Winter Trees, 76 

Respite, 76 

Nocturne, 77 

The Waning of Day, 78 

Lonnie Clair, 79 

Adelil, 80 

The Youth and The God, 81 

On the Moor, 82 

Outcast, 83 

The Empty Cross, 85 

Bewitched, 86 

If This Should Ever End, 87 



If, 88 

Sunset Lovers, 88 

Fulfillment, 90 

Wildness, 91 

Desire's Quest, 91 

An Unloved Day, 92 

Forgetting, 93 

Tro' the Night, 93 

Eternal Lovers, 94 

Oh Go Not Out Upon the Storm, 94 

Searching Death's Dark, 96 

To Tell How I Love It, 98 

The Dying Poet, 98 

To the Sea, 101 

Broken Harmony, 103 

Storm Twilight, 103 

Call to Your Mate Bob- White, 104 

An Italian in France, 105 

To a Warbler, 106 

Hate Not Love, 107 

Sundered, 107 

Who is He will Follow Me, 108 



SONG 

Her voice is vibrant beauty dipt 

In dreams of infinite sorrow and delight. 

Thro an awaiting soul 'tis slipt 

And lo words spring that breathe immortal night. 

JAEL 

Jehovah! Jehovah! art thou not stronger than 

gods of the heathen? 
I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host thou 

dost hate. 
But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is 

breathen 
His spirit — by night and by day come voices that 

wait. 

Athirst and affrighted he fled from the star- 
wrought waters of Kishon. 

His face was as wool when he swooned at the door 
of my tent. 

The Lord hath given him into the hold of perdi- 
tion, 

I smiled — but he saw not the face of my cunning 
intent. 

He thirsted for water; I fed him the curdless milk 
of the cattle. 



He lay in the tent under purple and crimson of 

Tyre. 
He slept and he dreamt of the surge and storming 

of battle. 
Ah ha! but he woke not to waken Jehovah's ire! 

He slept as he were a chosen of Israel's God Al- 
mighty ! 

A dog out of Canaan! — thought he I was woman 
alone ? 

I slipt like an asp to his ear and laughed for the 
sight he 

Would give when the carrion Kites should tear to 
his bone. 

I smote thro his temple the nail, to the dust did I 
bind him. 

My heart was a-leap with rage and a-quiver with 
scorn. 

And I danced with a holy delight before and be- 
hind him — 

I that am called blessed o'er all who're of Judah 
born. 

"Aye, come! I will shew thee, Barak, a woman 
is more than a wanior." 

I cried as I lifted the door wherein Sisera lay; 

"To me did he fly and I shall be called his de- 
stroyer — 

I Jael who am subtle to find for the Lord a way." 



lo 



"Above all the daughters of men be blest — of Gil- 

ead or Asshur." 
Sang Deborah, prophetess, under her waving palm. 
"Behold her ye people! behold her the heathen's 

abasher ! 
Behold her the Lord hath uplifted! behold, and be 

calm!" 

The mother of him at the window looks out thro 

the lattice to listen — 
Why roll not the wheels of his chariot? why does 

he stay? 
Shall he not return with the booty of battle, and 

glisten 
In songs of his triumph — ye women, why do ye 

not say?" 

And I was as she who danced when the Seas were 

rended asunder 
And stood until Egypt pressed in to be drowned 

unto death. 
My breasts were as fire with the glory, the rocks 

that were under 
My feet grew quick with the gloating that beat 

in my breath. 

At night I stole out where they cast him, a sop to 

the jackal and raven. 
But his bones stood up in the moon and I shook 

with affright. 

II 



The strength shrank out of my limbs and I fell a 
craven 

Before him — the nail in his temple gleamed blood- 
ily bright. 

Jehovah! Jehovah! art thou not stronger than 

gods of the heathen? 
I slew him, that Sisera, prince of the host thou 

dost hate. 
But fear of his blood is upon me, about me is 

breathen 
His spirit — by night and by day come voices that 

wait. 

I fly to the desert, I fly to the mountain — ^but 
they ^vill not hide me. 

His gods haunt the winds and the caves with ven- 
geance that cries 

For judgment upon me: the stars in their courses 
deride me — 

The stars thou hast hung with a breath in the 
wandering skies. 

Jehovah! Jehovah! I slew him the scourge and 

sting of thy children! 
Take from me his spirit, take from me the voice 

of his blood! 



12 



With madness I rave — by day and by night I'm 

bewildem. 
Jehovah release me! Jeliovah! if still thou art 

God! 

LIVE 

Live! Live! Live! 
Oh send no day unto death 
Undrained of the light of the song of the dew 
Distilling within its breath. 
Drink deep of the sun, drink deep of the night, 
Drink deep of the tempest's brew, 
Of summer, of winter, of autumn, of spring, whose 

flight 
Can give what men never give! 

Oh Live! Live! Live! 

Live ! Live ! Live ! 
And love life's every throb — 
The twinkling of shadows enmeshed in the trees, 
The passionate sunset's sob; 
The hurtling of wind, the heaving of hill, 
The moon-dizzy clouds, the seas 
That sweep with infinite sweeping all shores and 

thrill 
With thrilling but life can give! 

Oh Live! Live! Live! 



13 



Live ! Live ! Live ! 
Unloose from custom and care, 
From duty and sorrow and clinging design, 
Thy soul thro the silent air. 
Go into the fields where Nature's alone 
And drink from her mystic wine 
Divinity till thou art Nature and God — thy zone 
All breadth which Being can give! 

Oh Live! Live! Live! 

Bl THE INDUS 

Thou art late, O Moon, 
Late, 

I have waited thee long. 
The nightingale's flown to her nest. 

Sated with song. 
The champak hath no orour more 
To pour on the wind as he passeth o'er — 

But my heai-t it will not rest. 

Thou art late, Love, 
Late, 

For the moon is a-wane. 
The kusa-grass sighs with my sighs, 

Burns with my pain. 
The lotus leans her head on the stream — 
Shall I not lean to thy breast and dream, 

Dream ere the night-cool dies? 



14 



Thou art late, O Death, 
Latej 

For he did not come. 
A pariah is my heart, 

Cast from him — dumb! 
I cannot cry in the jungle's deep — 
Is it not time for Nirvana's sleep? 

O Death, strike with thy dart! 

FROM ABOVE 

What do I care if the trees are bare 
And the hills are dark 
And the skies are gray. 

What do I care for chill in the air, 

For crows that cark 

At the rough wind's way. 

What do I care for the dead leaves there — 
Or the sullen road 
By the sullen wood. 

There's heart in my heart 

To bear my load — 

So enough, the day is good! 



15 



THE DEAD GODS 

I thought I plunged into that dire Abyss 
Which is Oblivion the house of Death. 
I thought there blew upon my soul the breath 
Of time that was but never more can be. 

Ten thousand years I thought I lay within 
Its Void, blind, deaf, and motionless, until — 
Tho with nor eye nor ear — I felt the thrill 
Of seeing, heard its phantoms move and sigh. 

First one beside me spoke, in tones that told 
He once had been a god, "Persephone, 
Tear from thy brow its withered crown, for we 
iire king and queen of Tartarus no more; 

And that wan shriveled sceptre in thy hand, 
Wny dost thou clasp it still? Cast it away. 
For now it hath no virtue that can sway 
Dull shades or drive the Furies to their spoil. 

Cast it away, and give thy palm to mine: 
Perchance some unobliterated spark 
Of memory shall warm this dismal Dark. 
Perchance — vain! vain! love could not light such 
gloom." 



t6 



Then like an almighty ruin by him moved 
Another as in travail of some thought 
Near unto birth. Soon from his lips distraught 
By aged silence fell with hollow woe, 

"Ah Pluto, dost thou onetime lord of Styx 
And Acheron, make moan of night and cold? 
Were we upon Olympus as of old 
Laughter of thee would rock its festal height. 

But think, bethink thee of me, to whom or gloom 
Or cold were more unknown than impotence! 
See the unhurled thunderbolt brought hence 
To mock me when I dream I still am Jove!" 

Again my blindness grew unpiercable, 

Again I lay ten thousand lifeless years. 

And then my soul shook, woke, and saw three biers 

Chiselled of solid night majestically. 

The forms outlaid upon them seemed enwound 
As with the great silence of eternity. 
Numbing repose dwelt round them like a sea 
That long hath lost tide, wave, and roar, in death. 

"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris are their names," 
A spirit hieroglyphed unto my soul, 
"Ptah, Ammon, and Osiris — they who stole 
The heart of Egypt from the God of gods." 



17 



Long lifeless years again fell o'er my sight — 
Years desert but for sense of their own weight. 
Then once again I was unpalled and sate 
In darkness dense with presences more dark. 

had no voice broken thro its deadliness 

My soul would be as vanished winds. Yet ah, 

Who could e'er list the wild anathema 

Of words like these and fear death for his sting? 

"My ravens! my ravens Thought' and 'Memory,' 
Which sate upon my shoulder to reveal 
The world into my ear! May the hoar seal 
Of Niflheim freeze their slayer, man or god! 

Of Mflheim? — woe! woe! woe! for Niflheim were 
Valhalla to the immitigable dense void 
Of this abysm, in which all things are cloyed 
And lost in unremembered Nothingness! 

What do T cry? — I have forgot — it was so far ago. 
So far ago. And who could here recall, 
For long, aught but the thick and heavy thrall 
Of timelessness which is our changeless shroud?" 

'Twas Odin raving to his Noms, who with 
Dead eyes and lips remuttering chill croons 
Still graved his words upon their shields in runes 
That faded ere spelt on the pnpptral brass. 



i8 



Again came empty aeons — again I woke 
Mid many wraiths — Baal, Oiniuzd, India, all 
Whom shapeless ignorance stung by sin's gall 
Had given birth, close-huddled in despair. 

Their eyes were fixed upon a cloven slope 
Down whose descent still other forms a-fresh 
From earth were drawn by the unreleasing mesh 
Of Time to their irrevocable End. 

"They are the gods,'' one said, "the gods whom 

men 
Still taunt with wails for help." — Then a deep 

light 
Upbore me from the Gulf and thro ite might 
I heard the world's cry, "God alone is God." 



TO A ROSE 

(In a Hospital) 

Why do I love thee? — 

Not because thy wak'ning lips 
Were wooed to bloom by minstrel wind 
Of Araby or Ind. 



Not because thy fragrance slips 
In to my soul — as if thou must 
Be sprung of a mother's dust. 



19 



Not because she gave her breast 

To thee for one long night — she whose 

Pure heart I ne'er shall lose. 
But when I lay in sick unrest 
Afar from those who are mine own, 

Thou earnest from hands unknown, 
Therefore I love thee! 



A-LONGING FOR THE SEA. 

What are the heaths and hills to me? 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 
What are the flowers that dapple the dell. 
And the ripple of swallow wings over the dusk, 
What are the church and the folk who tell 
Their hearts to God? my heart is a husk! 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 

What is a love-lit peace to me? 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 
Never a child was glad at my knee. 
And the soul of a woman has never been mine. 
What can a woman's kisses be? — 
I fear to think how her arms would twine. 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 



What is an easesome cot to me? 

(rm a-longing for the sea!) 
Where I may swing my sorrow to sleep 
In a hammock hung o'er the voice of the waves. 
AVhere I may wake when the tempests heap 
And hurl their hate — and a brave ship saves. 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 

What is a quiet grave to me? 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 
What is a stone where an eye may spell 
Thro the lichen a name, a date, and a verse? 
Let me be laid in the deeps that swell 
And sigh and wander — an ocean hearse! 

(I'm a-longing for the sea!) 

THE RAMBLE 

Down the road 

Which asters tangle, 

Thro the gap 

Where green-briar twines. 

By the path 

Where dry leaves dangle 

Down from the ivy vines; 

Then across 

The sedgy fallows, 

And along 

The stifled brook, 

21 



Till it stops 

In liishy mallows 

Just at the bridge's crook; 

Then again 

O'er fence, thro thicket, 

To the mouth 

Of the rough ravine, 

While the weird 

Leaf-hidden cricket 

Chirrs thro the weirder green; 

On a way 

Of rocks, but quicker 

Is the beat 

Of heart and foot. 

As the beams 

Above us flicker 

Sun upon moss and root! 

And we leap — 

As wildness tingles 

From the air 

Into our blood — 

With a cry 

Thro gold-red dingles. 

Hid in the heart of the wood. 

Oh the wood 

With winds a- wrestle! 



With the nut 

And acorn strown 

Oh the wood 

Where creepers trestle, 

Tree unto tree o'ergrown! 

With a climb 

The ledging summit 

Of the hill 

Is reached in glee. 

For an Hour 

We gaze off from it 

Into the sky's blue sea! 

But a bell 

And sunset's crimson 

Soon recall 

The homeward path. 

And we turn 

As the glory dims on 

The hay-fields mounded math. 

Thro the soft 

And silent twilight 

We come 

To the stile at last. 

As the clear 

Undying eyelight 

Of the stars tells day is past. 



23 



FROM ONE BLIND 

I cannot say thy cheek is like the rose, 

Thy hair like wreathen sunbeams, and thy eyes 

Like violets leaping at the touch of God. 

My Darren gaze can never know what throes 

Such births of beauty waken, tho I rise 

Each day a-tremble with the ruthless hope 

That light will pierce my useless lids — then grope 

Till night, blind as the worm within his clod. 

Yet unto me thou art not less divine. 

1 touch thy cheek and know the mystery hid 

Within the twilight breeze. I smooth thy hair 

And understand how slipping hours may twine 

Themselves into eternity. Yea, rid 

Of all but love, I kiss thine eyes and seem 

To see all beauty God himself may dream. 

Why then should I o'ermuch for earth-sight care? 

THE WINDS 

The East-wind is a Bedouin, 

And Nimbus is his steed; 
Out of the dusk with the lightning's thin 
Blue scimitar he flies afar. 
Whither his rovings lead. 
The Dead Sea waves 
And Egypt cave^ 
24 



Of mummied silence laugh 
When he mounts to quench the Siroc's stench, 
And to wrench 
From his clutch the tyrant's staff. 

The West-wind is an Indian iirave 

Who scours the Autumn's crest. 
Dashing the forest down as a slave 
He tears the leaves from its limbs and weaves 

A maelstrom for his breast. 
Out of the night 
Crying to fright 

The earth he swoops to spoil — 
There is furious scathe in the whirl of his wrath, 

In his path 

There is misery and moil! 

The Soutn-wind is a Troubadour, 

The Spring's his serenade. 
Over the mountain, over the moor 
He blows to bloom from the wintei*'s tomb 
Blossom and leaf and blade. 
He ripples the throat 
Of the lark with a note 
Of lilting love and bliss, 
^nd tne sun and the moon, the night and the 
noon. 
Are a-swoon — 
When he woos them with his kiss. 



25 



The North-wind is a Viking — cold 

And cruel, armed with death! 
Born in the doomful deeps of the old 
Ice Sea that froze ere Ymir rose 

From Niflheim's ebon breath. 
And with him sail 
Snow, Frost, and Hail^ 

Thanes mighty as their lord, 
To plunder the shores of Summer's stores — 

And his roar's 

Like the sound of Chaos' horde. 

MOTHER-LOVE 

The seraphs would sing to her 

And from the River 

Dip her cool grails of radiant Life. 

The angels would bring to her, 

Sadly a-quiver, 

I^avirels she never had won in earth-strife. 

And often they'd fly with her 

O'er the star-spaces — 

Silent by worlds where mortals are pent. 

Yea, even would sigh with her, 

Sigh with wan faces! 

When she sat weeping of strange discontent. 

But one said, "Wliy weepest thou 
Here in God's heaven — 

36 



Is it not fairer than soul can see?" 

'Tis fair, ah! — but keepest thou 

Not me depriven 

Of someone — somewhere — who needest most me? 

For tho the day never fades 

Over these Meadows, 

Tho He has robed me and crowned — yet, yet! 

Some love-fear forever shades 

All with sere shadows — 

Had I no child there — whom I forget?" 



THE DAY-MOON 

So wan, so unavailing, 
Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing! 

Last night, sphered in thy shining, 
A Circe-mystic destinies divining; 

Today but as a feather 
Tom from a seraph's wing in sinful weather, 

Down-drifting from the portals 
Of Paradise, unto the land of mortals. 

Yet do I feel thee awing 
My heart with mystery, as thy updrawing 



27 



Moves thro' the tides of Ocean 
And leaves lorn beaches barren of his motion. 

Or strands upon his shallows 
The wreck whose weirded form at night unhallows 

The fisher-maiden's prayers 
For him — "that storms may take not unawares!" 

So wan, so unavailing, 
Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing! 

But Night shall come atoning 
Thy phantom life thro day, and high enthroning 

Thee 'neath her chambers arrassed 
With star-hieroglyphs, leave thee unharassed 

To glide with silvery passion. 
Till in earth's shadow swept thy glowings ashen. 



AUGUST GUESTS 

The wind slipt over the hill 
And down the valley. 

He dimpled the cheek of the rill 
With a cooling kiss. 

Then hid on the bank a-glee 



23 



And began to rally 
The i-ushes — Oh, 

I love the wind for this! 

A cloud blew out of the west 

And spilt his shower 
Upon the lily-oud crest 

And the clematis. 
Then over the virgin corn 

Besprinkled a dower 

Of dew-jems — And, 
I love the cloud for this! 

UNCROWNED 

I am not other than men are, you say, 
Faulty and failing, and your love can lend 
No seeming that shall hide the mar away, 
And make me to you as one in whom blend 
Infinities wherein your heart may lose 
All that it feels of flaw, or in me rues! 

But can it be? Did ever woman love 

Whose faith wreathed not about the brow she 

chose 
Aureolas illuming him above 
All that another thinks he is, or knows? 
I ask it, dearest, for the way is long — 
And, haloless, should I not lead you wrong? 



29 



LOVE'S WAY TO CHILDHOOD 

We are not lovers, you and I, 
Upon this sunny lane, 
But children who have never known 
Love's joy or pain. 

The flowers we pass, the summer brook, 
The bird that o'er us darts — 
We do not know 'tis they that thrill 
Our childish hearts. 

The earth-things have no names for us. 
The plowing means no more 
Than that they like to walk the fields 
Who plow them o'er. 

ine roads, the woods, the heaven, the hills, 

Are not a World today — 

But just a place God's made for us 

In which to play. 



THE FIGHT WITH FATE. 

Ye men of plume and bayonet 

Have ye ever fought with FaAe? 

She's never a gun and never a sword, 

Nor swarms she ever a-field with her horde, 

But, death! her stroke swings never late! 

And woe when her wrath is whet! 

30 



Ye know not whence she comes nor how 

Till her talons tear your heart. 

No singing of shot, no soughing of shell 

No Haunting of flames from mouths like Hell, 

But sudden, silent, terrible, swart, 

Aiises her boding brow! 

Nor fights she for the love of fight, 
Or vict'ry's valiant thrill; 
But ghastly to God, and godless to men, 
Bemadded of haunting Chaos' den. 
She bursts thro barriers good or ill 
With measureless maniac migni! 

Yea! men of plume and bayonet 

Have ye never fought with Fate? 

Then boast not bravery, swear not of skill. 

For yet your blood to horror may chill, 

When di-unken of Doom and hot with hate 

Her ravaging wrath is whet! 

TRANSCENDED 

I who was learned in death's lore 

Oft held her to my heart 

And spoke of days when we should love no more — 

In the long dust, apart, 

"Immortal?" No — it could not be. 
Spirit with flesh must die. 

31 



Tho heart should pray and hope make ceaseless 

plea. 
Reason would still outcry. 

She died. They wrapped her in the dust — 

I heard the dull clods' dole. 

And then I knew she lived — that death's dark lust 

Could never touch her soul. 

TEARLESS 

Do women weep when men have died? 

It cannot be! 
For I have sat here by his side. 
Breathing dear names against his face, 
That he must list to were his place 

Nearest God's throne. 
Yet have I wept no tear and made no moan. 

Do women weep when men have died? 

Or sob and plain? 
Do women weep? — I was his bride — 
They brought him to me cold and pale — 
Upon his lids I saw the trail 

Of deathsome pain — 
They said, '"Her tears will fall like autumn rain.' 

I cannot weep! Not if hot tears, 

Dropped on his lips. 
Might bum him back to life and years 

32 



Of yearning love, would any rise 
To flood the anguish from my eyes — 

And I'm his bride! 
Ah me, do women weep when men have died? 



TO THE NIGHTINGALE 

Tho thou hast never unpent thy pain's delight 

Upon these airs, bird of the poet's love, 

Yet must ± sing of thy singing for the night 

Has poured her jewels into the lap of heaven 

As they who've heard thee say thou pour'st above 

The wood such ecstasies as were not given 

By Venus' nestling breasts unto the dove. 

Often I've watched the moon orb her fair gold 
Still clung to by the tattered mists of day, 
And look for thee. Then has my hope grown bold 
Till almost I could see how the near laurels 
Would tremble with thy trembling: but the sway 
Of bards who've wreathed thee with unfading 

chorals 
Has neld my longing lips from this poor lay. 

None out the sky-hid lark whose spirit is 

Too high for earth may vie for praise with thee 

In aery rhapsody. And since 'tis his 

To sing 01 day and joy whilst thou of sorrow 

And night's o'erhovering singest, thou'lt ever be 

33 



More dear than he — till hearts shall cease to bor- 
row 
From grief the healing for life's mystery. 

Then loose thy song! Tho no gia\"e ear may list 

Its lyric trouble, still 'tis soothing sweet 

To know that songs unheard and graces missed 

By every eye melt on the skies that nourish 

Us with immortal blue, and, changed, repeat 

Their protean lovliness in all we cherish. 

For beauty cannot die howe'er 'tmay fleet. 



LOVE-CALL IN SPRING 

Not only the lark but the robin too 

(Oh heart o'my heart come into the wood) 

Is singing the air to gladness new 

As the breaking bud 

And the freshet's flood! 

Not only the peeping grass and the scent 
(Oh love o' my heart fly unto me here!) 
Of violets coming ere April's spent — 

But the frog's shrill cheer. 

And the crow's wild jeer! 

Not only the blue, not only the breeze, 
( Oh soul o' my heart why tarry so long ! ) 
But sun that is sweeter upon the trees 

34 



Than rills that throng 
To the brooklet's song! 

Oh heart o' my heart, Oh heart o' my love, 
(Oh soul o'my soul, haste unto me, haste!) 
For Spring is below and God is above — 

But all is a waste 

Without thee— Oh haste! 



WORLD SORROW 

Wond-sorrow have I known, like unto God. 

Nothing of pain but, echoing down my breast, 

Brings wan reverberance of peaceless pang. 

The struck bird's cry wounds my all-feeling blood 

To pity that will not be solaced. 

Sound on me like far pleas of the unborn 

Against predestined days. A withering bud 

Brews barrenness thro all the verdancy 

Of Spring. And, in a tear, tho anguish shape 

It on the warm lid of joy, earth's Tragedy — 

Whose curtain falls not for it has no end — 

Comes mirrored to me with infinite thrill. 

How shall I 'scape it! How, how escape 
The trooping of prayers lost upon the void, 
Of hopes misborn and fading not to rest! 



35 



How shall I burn not with all vain-lit loves 

That alway thro me billow their slow fire, 

Fed by the agony of new-broke hearts! 

How loose me from too long commisery 

For those whom unrequiting Time has given 

To the altar of the upward world's unrest! 

A grief immedicable to the Hand 

Whos3 mystery of returning sun can heal 

The earth of Winter, seems here! A grief but 

calm 
Of immortality can make forgiven! 

i et, even as all the burst and gleam of stars 
Wreathing the Illimitable with beauty does 
Not quench the vast of night, so do all joys 
Life strews along her burning to the grave 
Prevail not o'er the shadow of sure death. 
And Oh, Humanity, long-suffering Harp 
Of passion-strings unnumbered shall His skill 
Flung thus forever o'er thy snapping chords 
Build but these harmonies that seem to us 
Unworth the misery of the trampled worm? 
Wouiu., would I were not vibrant with all strains 
He strikes from thee, or else more perfect tuned! 
Worii-sorrow have I known, like unto God. 



36 



TO HER WHO SHALL COME. 



Out of the night of lovelessness I call 

Thee, as, in a chill chamber where she lay 

In unbelieveable death, I raised the pall 

To cry then, "Mother! — My mother!" And, the 

the way 
Thou comest is unseen; tho my arms are sore 
With emptiness when morning's silent gray 
Awakes me too long aloneness; yet I know 
Thou hast been near me, thou, who like light 

wilt go 
Beside me — when I have found thee — evermore. 



II 



'Twas when o'ermuch of childly joy had left 

Me lone at evening — with sad calm upon 

My heart, and eyes turned where a church-spire 

cleft 
The night with sable shaft — my gaze was drawn 
Up, infinitely up, till lo, I first felt God, 
First knew Divinity within me dawn. 
And so, oh thou awaited of my soul, the first 
Bright surety of thy being on me burst — 
To be as bounteous Spring unto earth's sod. 



37 



Ill 



Yet life's not sure they tell me, and love less. 
Many have dreamed of love who never found 
The love they dreamed, e'en wnen the sting and 

stress 
Was ended, as all ends on earth's sad round. 
But i shall find thee ! For warm about my heart 
And tremoring wildly as their ends were bound 
To thine unknown and far away, I feel 
The mating tendrils of God's will fast steal 
The fated distance holding us apart. 



IV 



And as her new babe's first numb cry rings in 
The dawn of motherhood unto some bride 
^Vhose bridehood's proved but pain, so, far within 
The uttermost deeps of my man's soul, denied 
To all but thee, thy first — tho nameless — word 
Shall herald the light of love's new day to bide 
With me: for thy lips, thine alone, can sound 
The '"Open Sesame" which shall not be found 
In vain 'gainst vaults that ne'er before have stir- 
red. 



In the glad Eden of my heart each day 

I plant thee a flower. Now 'tis the pansy, i:'eace, 

38 



I And now the lily, Faith — or 'tis a spray 
Of the climbing ivy, Hope. And they ne'er cease 
Around the still unblossoming rose-bud, Love, 

I To bend in fragrant tnbute to her sway. 

*Then, for thy shelter from life's sultrier suns — 
Strength's oak shall shade Joy's brooklet where 

it nins 
With glistening glee from winds that grieve above 

VI 

I will not say thy face and form shall be 
As hers oi Milo — thy motion's grace beyond 
Hearts imaging; nor ask more majesty 
Of mind for thee than many whom Time's wand 
I Has waved to Oblivion knew. But let, oh let 
Love's bliss imbue thee till thy flesh be bond 
Unto all beauties souls could seek above! 
And ku thy fairest wisdom flow from love! 
Then shall there be no want I must forget. 

VII 

When thou art come and to thee I shall tell 
My rosary's Glorias — the scenes and songs 
That please me most; the Nocturne by whose spell 
My soul, a sphere of sound, swings mid the throngs 
Of stars whose symphony is Night; the line 
That sings me Immortality above the wrongs 
Of time; — wilt thou not cry, "Beloved! — these 
Were dearest me ! and 'twas because decrees 
Of love, before love came, had made me thine." 

39 



VIII 

"Before love came — before?" Answer thou Yea, 

Tho taunting infidels, whose Mecca still 

Is Doubt — not Truth, deny. For doth God stay 

From sending his desire o'er earth, to tnrill 

Kin souls to harmony? Nay! — tho He fail 

Ofttimes — for Fate's discordant cries still play 

upon life's sitrings — yet oft do we, within 

The broken strain, hear all that would have 

been. — 
And, dearest this alone were worth the bale. 



IX 



But snould I muse, perchance, in after times, 
As sadly some have done, "I won her not 
As soul wins soul, but with foreplotted limes. 
With fawning gifts and gallantries begot 
For that alone!" — would not love's fragrance fail? 
It will not be! All other wants or needs forgot. 
The hour will dawn, thy heart be changed to mine 
And mine to thine, with one quaff of love's wine 
From the vineyards He hath set in Heaven's vale. 



X 



And tho of grief we'll drink, still, knowing how 
This world built darkly o'er by mystery 



40 



Floats on the floods of Life, shall we not vow 
Love only (like the ark-sent dove) can flee 
Across the unsunken waters to some peak 
Of the Beyond, and from the Olive's tree 
Pluck us the pledge of its unaging Clime? — 
Swiitiy I turn the day- writ leaves of Time 
For word of thee whom all my yearnings seek. 



XI 



Where art thou now? Watching with lover's eye 

The eve-star wander? Listening thro dim trees 

Some thrilled muezzzin of the forest cry 

From his leafy minaret? Or by the sea's 

Blue orim, while the spectral moon half o'er it 

hangs 
Like the fairy isle of Avalon, do these 
My yearnings speak to thee of days thy feet 
Have never trod? — Sweet, sweet, oh mortal sweet 
Meseems, must be our meeting's mystic pangs! 



XII 



And 'twill be soon! For last night near to day, 
Dreaming, God called me thro the space-built 

sphere 
Of heaven and said, "Come, little one, and lay 
Thine ear unto my Heart — there thou shalt hear 
The secrets of this world where evils war." 



Such things I heard as must rend mortal clay 

To tell, and trembled — till God, pitying, 

Said, "Listen!" . . . Oh, my love, I 

heard thee sing 
Out of thy window to the morning star! 

THE ATONER 

Winter has come in sack- cloth and ashes 
(Penance for Summer's enverdured sheaves) 
Bitterly, cruelly, bleakly he lashes 
His limbs that are naked of grass and leaves. 

He moans in the forest for sins unforgiven 
(Sins of the revelrous days of June) 
Moans while the sun drifts dull from the heaven, 
(jriftless of warmth's beshriving boon. 

Long must he mourn, and long be his scourging, 
(Long will the day-god aloof frown cold) 
Long will earth listen the rue of his dirging — 
Till the dark beads of his days are told. 

SEEMING 

Sweet under swooning blue and mellow mist. 
Waves upon waves of forest overflow 
The hills with hues, green, crimson, amaranth. 
And gold. Winds warm with the memory of hours 

42 



Dead Summer gathered in her leafy lap 
Kustle the distance with dim murmurings 
That sink upon the air as soft as shades, 
Dropped from the over-leaning clouds, sink on 
The fields; while golden-rod and aster husht 
In sunny silence and the oblivion 
Of life drawn from the insentient veins of eartli, 
Await the searing close of Autumn's reign. 
It is a day when death must seem but birth, 
And birth but death, and life — forgotten pain. 



INTIMATION 

All night I smiled as I slept, 

For I heard the March-wind feel 

Blindly about in the trees without 
For buds to heal. 

All night in dreams, for I smelt, 
In the rain-wet woods and fields, 

The coming flowers and the glad green hours 
That summer yields. 

And when at dawn I awoke. 

At the blue-bird's wooing cheep, 

The winter with all its chill and pall 
Seemed but a sleep. 



43 



THE DEGENERATE 

Seized by Heredity's relentless hand 

And set within the circling Chance called Life; 

Unwrung by scorn of mortal doom to rise 

From vagrant wretchedness, and charge his heart 

With strife's immortal sting; unframed to draw 

With faith, from never-spent Omnipotence, 

Strength for the brute and iiell-mad ills of 

earth ; 
He hangs upon the shaming breasts 
Of Charity and Ease. 

Souls stagger by him — souls the vampire Want 
Hath so of Beauty drained, they could not tho 
At death God bade, lift wings to Heaven. Round 
Him shudder the world-sick, wrencht with dread 

of sin, 
Grief, infamy, and doubt of that dire fall 
From the quick precipice of Time a-down 
The Eternal. He only feels tne sullen gnaw 
Of impotence which drags at last 
To life's Moloch — Despair. 

Great Macedonian, can thy war-sown fame 
That roused dead continents, not rouse him too? 
Angelo, at whose urgence manhood sprung 
Into tae marble's cold, canst thou not man 
Him to intrepid aim? or thou, Christ, speak 
Divinity's Desire into his soul? 



Heroes and martyrs of all days and hopes, 
Are ye to him vain ghosts that glide 
The Desert of dead Years? 

Babylons of every land, your wile's 
Unnerving lure hath done this wrong. Yield him 
Unto Arcadian uplands sweet with sun. 
Lead him to nursing Nature moving strong, 
Mid silences and mystic solitudes. 
In travail of Spring's Day. Perchance the heal 
Of her simplicity shall drive sere sloth 
Out of his veins, and flush them with 
Ancestral valor's bloom. 

Perchance too he may hear, with hope's rapt ear, 

The incommunicable strains of Weal 

That haunt the Unknown; feel the infinitude 

Of common deed; the everlasting worth 

A moment bears; and learn that tiTisted Toil, 

Led to his task by Love, alone can stun 

Fate's power, and win Promethean fires of Truth, 

Which Death, be he Oblivion, 

May quench, but make not vain. 

SERENITY 

And could I love it more — this simple scene 
Of cot-strewn hills and fields long-harvested. 
That lie as if forgotten were all green, 
So bare, so dead? 

45 



Or could my gaze more tenderly entwine 
Each pallid beach or silvery sycamore, 
Outreaching arms in patience to divine 
If winter's o'er? 

All no, the wind has blown into my veins 
The blue infinity of sky, the sense 
Of meadows free today from icy pains — 
From wintry vents. 

And sunny peace more virgin than the glow 
Falling from eve's first star into the night, 
Brings hope believing what it ne'er can know 
With mortal sight. 

CHANGED 

These are the leafy hills and searing vales 
Of iridescent Autumn — this the oak 
Against whose lichened bole I leant and looked 
Away the sunny nours of afternoon. 

Here are the berried bitter-sweet and elder sprays 
I fingered, dreaming to the muted flow 

Of breezes overhead — and here the word 

1 wrote unwittingly upon the softened soil. 
How long ago it was I cannot tell: 

The loneliness of unrequited love 
Lies like a blank eternity between 

Those hours and these I hear slip thro my heart. 

I only know all days I've ever seen 
Must seem now of some other life a part! 

46 



AUTUMN 

I know her not by fallen leaves 
Or resting heaps of hay, 
Nor by the sheathing mists of mauve 
That soothe the fiery day. 

I know her not by plumping nuts. 
By redded hips and haws, 
Or by the silence hanging sad 
Under the wind's sere pause. 

But by her sighs I know her well — 
They are like Sorrow's breath; 
Ana by this longing, strangely still, 
ior something after death. 

WRITTEN IN HELL 

Against a castle moated gloomily by a bitter 

drain of blood, 
From whose fetid wave rose fumily 
Airs that reeked as with contumely 
And demonic stain, I stood. 

Waiting for her sign — 

A shriek repeated nine. 

I shrank at, every aspish quivering fear set scrawl- 

. ing in my breast 
But betimes I felt a shiveiing 

47 



Shriek cut ear and brain with slivering 
Stings of terror, sin, unrest — 

Christ! it raised the dead 

Out of the moat's black bed. 

Nine times — and then across the thickening reek 

a rusty draw was dropped; 
Thro portcullis sped a quickening 
Shadow past to where with sickening 
Feet, befixed by awe I stopped — 

There she laughed a laugh 

No devil's soul could quatf. 

I swear its clamor tore the stuttering leaves from 

shrub and shrunken tree; 
Swear no limb e'er heard muttering 
Like that spawn of echoes spluttering 
Midnight with their drunken glee — 

Yet, ere half were done, 

I could not hear a one. 

She put her finger burning fierily to my lips — I 

heard them lock. 
Led me them a marsh-way mirily 
Quick with ooze that spurted spirily 
Thro root-rotten curd and rock. 

Things like water-ghouls 

Slid slimily in pools. 

She stepped just once upon a hideous burrow, 
dank and haired with grass; 

48 



Fixed upon me eyes perfidious 
As a fiena s are, yet insidious — 
Questioned if I dared to pass. 

"I would burn in Hell 

To find him," from me fell. 

We waded oily dark cadaverous with the sound 

of gabbling dead. 
Once we heard them hoot palaverous 
Drivel learned beneath unsavorous 
Moulds, and saw a babbling head 

Grin to a hissing bat 

That scraped him as he spat. 

Witch she was, I knew, turned shepherdess to a 

soul blind as a sheep's. 
But I dogged her o'er a jeopardous 
Steep down which she sped with leopardous 
Limbs into miasmic deeps. 

"Swim," she gasped behind — 

Then like a she-wolf whined. 

It almost seemed to me as deadening as the sluice 

of dreary Styx. 
Fire and foulness mixed with leadening 
Lush, I thought, but swam the reddening 
Stuff a league with weary licks. 

Up a sulphurous bank 

We climbed, and there I sank. 



49 



Again she laughed that laugh — a shriveling 

ghastly, gaunt, uncanny spate. 
Up I sprang and cursed my sniveling 
Soul for weariness — for driveling 
When so near the man 1 hate. 

"You will find him there," 

She pointed — thro her hair. 

I write these words from hell, where bloodily 

locked to him in fight I woke. 
Here we fall down caverns ruddily 
Spilt with glazing gore and muddily 
Dashed with stagnant night and smoke. 

Yet I do not care. 

For he groans by me — there. 



WITH OMAR 

I sat with Omar by the tavern door. 
Musing the Mystery of mortals o'er. 

And soon with answers alternate we strove 
Whether, beyond Death, Life hath any Shore. 

' * Come, fill the Cup, ' ' said he, ''In the fire of Spring 
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fiing. 

The Bird of Time has but a little way 
7 o flutter — and the Bifd is on the Wing,'* 



5^ 



" Is on the Wing ? " I answered ; " Then have I 
No heart for Wine. Must we not cross the Sky 

Unto Eternity upon his wings — 
Or. failing, fall into the gulf and die?" 

"►S*^ some J or the Glories of this World; and some 
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come ; 
But you, Friend, take the Cash — the Credit 
leave y 
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum I " 

"What take the Cash and let the Credit go? 
Spend all upon the Wine the while we know 

A possible Tomorrow may bring thirst 
For Drink but Credit then shall cause to how?" 

*' Yea, make the most of what we yet may spend, 
Before we too into the Dust descend; 

Dust tmto Dust, and under Dust, to lie, 
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and — sans 
E7idf'' 

" Into the Dust we shall descend — we must. 
But can the soul not break the crumbling Crust 

In which he is encaged? To hope or to 
Despair he will — which is more wise or just? " 

^'The wordly hope men set their hearts upon 
Turns Ashes — or it prospers : and anon, 

Like Snoiv upon the Desert's dusty Face, 
Lighting a little hour or two — is gone.'' 



"Like Snow it comes, to oool one burning day; 
And like it goes — for all our plea and sway. 

But flooding tears, nor Wine can ever purge 
The Vision it has brought to us away." 

"But to this world we come and Why not knowing 
Nor whence, like water willy-nilly flowing ; 

And out of it, as Wind along the waste. 
We know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing. ^^ 

" True, little do we know of Why or Whence. 
But is forsooth our Darkness evidence 

There is no Light? — the worm may see no star 
Tho heaven with myriad multitudes be dense." 

''But, all unasked, we're hither hutried Whence? 
And, all unasked, we're Whither hurried hence? 

O, many a cup of this forbidden Wine 
Must drown the mem.ory of that insolence.'" 

" Forbidden Wine ? Ah, if it is forbid, 
'Tis by that quenchless soul within us hid, 

Which cries, 'Feed — feed me not on Wine alone, 
For to Immortal Banquets I am bid.' " 

" Well oft I think that never blows no red 
The Rose as where some buried CcEsar bled : 

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears 
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely Head.'^ 



52 



" If from the shapely Clay thro' with Life's throes 
More beautiful spring Hyacinth and Rose, 

Will the great Gardner for the uprooted Soul 
Find Use no sweeter than — useless Repose ? " 

" We caniiot know — so fill the cup that clears 
To-day of past regret and future fears : 

To-morrow ! — Why, To-morrow we tnay be 
Ourselves with yesterday' s sev'n thousand Years y 

" No Cup there is to bring oblivion 

More during than Regi'et and Fear — no, none! 

And Wine that's Wine to-day — may it not be 
Marah before to-mon-ow's Sands have run?" 

''Myself when young did eagerly frequent 
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument 

About it and about : but evermore 
Came out by the same door whereiji I wenty 

" The doors of Argument may lead Nowhither, 
Reason become a Prison where may wither 

From sunless eyes the Infinite, from hearts 
All Hope, when their sojourn too long is thither.*' 

*'Up from Earth's Centre thro' the Seventh Gate 
I rose, and on the throne of Saturn sate. 

And many a Knot unravelled by the Road — 
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.'" 



53 



" The Master-knot knows but the Master-hand 
That scattered Saturn and his countless Band 

Like seeds upon the unplanted heaven's Air: 
The truth we reap from them is Chaff thrice 
fanned." 

' ' Yet if the Soul can fling the Dust aside, 
And naked on the air of Heaven ride, 

WerH not a shame — werH not a shame for hint 
In this clay carcass crippled to abide? " 

" No, lor a day bound in this Dust may teach 
More of tiie Saki's Mind than we can reach 

Through aeons mounting still from Sky to Sky — 
May open through all Mystery a breach." 

" You speak as if Existence closing your 
Account, and mine, should know the like no more; 

The Eternal Sakifrom that Bowl has poured 
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour.^^ 

"Bubbles we are — pricked by the point of Death. 
But in each Bubble dwells there not a Breath 

That lifts it and at last to Freedom flies, 
And o'er all heights of Heaven wandereth ? " 

''A Mo7nenVs halt — a momentary taste 
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste— 

And Lo ! — the phantom Caravan has reached 
The Nothing it set out from, — Oh^ tnake haste ! " 

54 



" And yet it should be — it should be that we 
Who drink shall drink of immortality. 

The Master of tiie Well has much to spare: 
Will he say ' Taste' — then shall we no more be? ' 

'^The Moving Finger writes ; and having writ, 
Moves on ; nor all your Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
Nor all your tears wash out a ivord of it.'''' 

" But is 't not better? Might we not erase 
The Letter of some Sorrow in whose place 
No other sounding, we should fail to spell 
The Heart which yearns behind the mock-world's 
Face?" 

" Well, this I know ; whether the one True Light 
Kindle to Love, or Wrath — consume 7ne quite, 

One Flash of it within the Tavern caught 
Better than in the Temple lost outright.'' 

" In Temple or in Tavern 't may be lost. 
And Everywhere that Love hath any Cost 

It may be found; tne Wrath it seems is but 
A Cloud whose Dew shall make its power most." 

" You zvould the Spangle of Existence spend 
About the Secret — quick about it. Friend ! 

A Hair perhaps divides the False and True — 
And upon what, prithee, does life depend? " 

55 



"A Hair — perhaps. And but a Line divides 
The Earth and Heaven, yet it e'er abides 
That Heaven is Heaven, and Earth is Earth. 
And life?— 
For it He will repay us much besides." 

" But see his Presence, thro' Creation's veins 
Running Quick-silver-like eludes your pains ; 
Taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and 
They change and perish all — but he remains.'''' 

" All ? — a little while lie down to sleep, and lo, 
The Soul seems quenched in Darkness — is it so? 

Rather believe what seemeth not than seems 
Of Death, until we know — until we know.'''' 

'^ So wastes the Hour — gone in the vain pursuit 
Of This and That we strive o''er and dispute. 

Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape 
Than sadden after none, or bitter fruit.'" 

" But Sadness — it is not a Shadow thrown 
Across our Path by glories of the Unknown, 

Lest we may think He has no more to give 
And bide content with dim-lit Earth alone ? " 

''Still, strange, isH not ? that of the myriads wh 
Before us passed the door of darkness through, 

Not one returns to tell us of the Road, 
Which to discover we must travel too ? " 

56 



"Strange? Ah, but stranger that we who have 

heard 
Love sounding through Life's all should need the 

word 
Of one returned. And Shame 'twere to believe, 
Though evil urge, they were by Death deterred." 

*' Yet send thy Soul throjigh Ihe Invisible 
Some letter of the After-life to spell : 

And by and by thy Soul returns to thee 
And answers I myself am Heaven and Hell.'' 

" Ah, through the Invisible. But if he is sent 
Through Earth where living Goodness though 'tis 
blent 
With Evil 'dures, may he not read the Voice; 
'To make thee but for Death were toil ill spent?* 

"And, when the Angel of the darker drink 
At last shall find us by the river-brink, 
And offering his Cup invite our souls 
Forth to our Lips to quaff, we shall not shrink.''' 

" Nay. But if in the sable Cup we knew 
Sleep without Waking were the fateful brew, 

Nobler were it to curse as Coward Him 
Who roused us unto Light — then Light withdre^v. 

" Then Thou who didst with pitfall a7id with gin 
Beset the Road I was to wander in. 

Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round 
Enmesh, and then im,pute my fall to sin." 

57 



" He will not. If one evil we endure 
To ultimate Debasing, oli be sure 

'Tis not of Him predestined and the sin 
Not His nor ours — but fate's He could not cure." 

" Yet Ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose/ 
That Youth's sweet-scented Manuscript should 

close ! 
The Nightingale that ou the branches sang — 
Ah whence, and whither flown again, who 

knows ! ' ' 

" So does it seem — ^no other joys like these! 

Yet Summer comes, and Autumn's honored ease; 

And wintry age, is't ever whisperless 
Of that last Spring, whose Verdure shall not 
cease ? " 

" Would but some winged Angel ere too late 
Arrest the yet unfolded roll of Fate, 

And make the stern Recorder otherwise 
Enregister : or quite obliterate ! " 

" To otherwise enregister believe 

He tons eternally, nor asks Reprieve. 

And could Creation perfect from his hands 
Have come at Dawn, none overmuch should 
grieve." 

So till the wan and early scent of day 
We strove, and silent turned at last away. 
Thinking how men in ages yet unborn 
Would ask and answer — trust and doubt and pray. 
58 



LOVE HAS COME 

Love has come! Love, with the voice 

Of radiant song to my heart! 

Love has come! and a wonder returned 

To the days that beamed and the nights that 

burned ! 
Love has come — and not to depart! 

Love! of all life the Choice! 

Love has come! Love, to my eyes 
That find but the beauty of earth! 
Love, oh love! and the meadow-sweet bloom, 
The daisy's delight, and the mint's perfume, 
Know of a dream, a glory, a birth 
Out of some Paradise! 

Love has come! 0, to my lips 
Brought kisses of burning bliss. 
Love! love! love! and the rapturous sway 
Of the iris hope and ox mirths that play 
Choralings in my blood, I wis 
Nothing of Joy outstrips! 

Love has come! Love, to my soul! 
And lent an immortal light! 
Love, oh love! like a laughing of stars, 
Like a singing of winds at the dawn's red bars! 
Love has come! let the wild years roll — 
Naught do I fear their flight! 



59 



IN JULY 

This path will tell me where dark daisies dance 
To the white sycamores that dell them in; 
Where crow and flicker cry melodious din, 
And blackberries in ebon ripeness glance 
Luscious enticings under briery green. 
It will slip under the coppice limbs that lean 
Brushingly as the slow-belled heifer pants 

Toward weedy water-plants 
That shade the pool-sunk creek's reluctant trance. 

I shall find bell-flower spires beside the gap 
And lady phlox within the hollow's cool; 
Cedar with sudden memories of Yule 
Above the tangle tipped with blue skullcap. 
The high hot mullen fond of the full sun 
Will watch and tell the low mint when I've won 
The hither wheat where idle breezes nap, 

And fluffy quails entrap 
Me from their brood that crouch to 'scape mishap. 

Then I shall reach the mossy water-way 
Ihat gullies the dense hill up to its peak, 
There dally listening to the eerie eke 
Of drops into cool chalices of clay. 
Then on, for elders odorously will steal 
My senses till I climb up where they heal 
The iivia heat of its malingering ray, 

And wooingly betray 
To memory many a long forgotten day. 
6o 



There I shall rest within the woody peace 
Of afternoon. The bending azure frothed 
With silveryness, the sunny pastures swathed 
Fragrant with morn-mown clover and seed-fleece, 
The hills where hung mists muse, and Silence calls 
To Solitude thro' aged forest halls. 
Will waft into me their mysterious ease. 

And in the wind's soft cease 
I shall hear hlntings of eternities. 

EVE 

Down the palm-way from Eden in the moist 

Midnight lay Eve by her outdriven mate. 

Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet 

Of birth within the Garden's ecstacy. 

Pitiful round her face that could not lose 

Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn 

Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh 

Along her loveliness in the white moon. 

Sudden her dream too cruelly impent 

With pain broke, and a cry fled shuddering 

Into the wounded stillness from her lips. 

Awake she fearfully felt for his hand 

While tears that had before ne'er visited 

Her lids with sadness stinging traced her cheeks. 

" Oh, Adam ! " then unutterably burst 
Her moan on the pale air, " What have I dreamed ! 
Now do I understand His words, so dim 
To creatures that were tuned but unto bliss. 
6i 



His breathing tliat ran rapture in my veins, 
How hath it ceased in sorrow like this wind 
That knows there hath been somewhere sin and 

shame. 
Since thou didst kiss me at the dusk, and I 
Wept at caresses that were once all joy, 
I have slept seeing thro Futurity. 
Most bitter is knowledge when the veiling ease 
Of innocence is fallen! And bitter is 
Sin-given sight! To look no more above 
Untroubled by the stars, no more to earth 
Unf earful of its bloom! Nor round thee still 
To find the spell, the beautiful mystery 
Thou worest luminan^ly as the sun! 
But worse, ah God how worse, to be engirt 
By the uncreated ages visibly! 
Foresuffering phantoms crowded from the womb 
Of Time, and all with lamentable mien 
Accusing thee and me! Phantoms uncalled. 
Yet older seemed their names to me than speecn. 
Sodom and dark Gomorrah from whose flames 
Fleeing one turned . . . how like her look to mine 
When the Tree's horror trembled on my taste! 
Fierce Ninevah whose bloody rapine sank 
Under the shroud of sandy centuries 
That hid me not from tlie buried cursing eyes 
Of women who gave birth. And Babylon 
Upbuilded on our sin, with cloudy shrines 
Whose immortality shone but a day. 
Fell at my feet with terrible reproach. 

62 



Ah to be mother of all misery! 

To be lirst called out of the earth and fail 

For a whole world! To shame maternity 

For women evermore — women whose tears 

Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away! 

To see the wings of Death — thou knowest them 

not 
My Adam — beat endless over all, and hear 
The swooning ages suffer up to God! 
And O, the birth-cry of a guiltless child! 
In it are sounding of dead sin and woe, 
With prophesy of ill beyond all years! 
Yearning for beauty never to be seen, 
With gleam of irrecoverable joy. 
And I whose dream mourned with all motherhood, 
Must hear it soon! Already do soft skilly 
Low- babbled lulls, enticings and quick tones 
Of tenderness, that will like light awake 
The sleeping memory children shall bring 
Out of the dark, move in me longingly. 
But thou, Adam, dear fallen thought of God, 
When thou a-throe shalt hear humanity 
Cry in thy child, groaning wilt wish the world 
Back in Unshapenness : yea thou wilt fill 
God's ear with troubled wonder and unrest! " 

Softly he smoothed her straying hair, and kissed 

The fever from her lips. Over the palms 

The sad moon poured her peace into their eyes, 

Till sleep, the shadow of Oblivion, 

Kested upon them bountifully sweet. 

63 



WHERE PEACE IS DUTY 

Dimming in sunniness, aerily distant, 

Valley and hillside float; 
Up to me wavering, softly insistent, 

Wanders the wood-brook's note. 

Anchored beyond in azure unending 

Cloud-sails await wind-tide. 
Oh for the skylands where soon they'll be wend- 
ing— 

Where unabiding bide! 

Where Time's aflow thro' the infinite spaces, 

Checked by no throttle of pain! 
Where stars aglow pass like seraphim faces — 

Where silence never shall wane! 

Where there's no sense but of beauty's wild sweet- 



Thought but of sweetening beauty ! 
VVnere wanting's stilled in unwantmg's complete- 
ness, 
Where peace is duty! 

SILENCE 

Silence is song unheard. 

Is beauty never bom. 
Is light forgotten — left unstirred 

Upon Creation's morn. 

64 



THE WORLD- WEAVER 

God sat at his loom and wove the world 

Ere the morning stars had sung; 
The shuttles of Day and Night fast swirled 

Thro' the warp of Time whose threads are hung 
To the beams of Eternity. 

He wove — the earth and the sea were wrought 

Of the fibres of his will. 
Then the sea and the earth with life were fraught 

And through their barrenness burst a thrill 
Of mystic Maternity. 

The shuttles swiftlier flew and deep 

His 8oul was set in his work. 
But He paused, for He heard a creature weep 

" I am made of hands that no time irk 
Of weaving wretchedness! " 

As a flash of Fate from Chaos came 

The words to the Weaver's heart. 
" What have I woven ! who gives name 

Or good or ill to my shuttle's art 
And to Me the Titleless?" 

He looked — saw man in his misery 

Plod o'er the wildering earth, 
And brooding. He said, " Too much in thee 
Of my Spirit's Breath has sprung to birth, 
Strange godling of the dust ! 
65 



And yet thy being must still be spun 

And woven must be thy fate, 
Till the plan of my Purposing be done 

Tho' heaven grow weary of End so late 
And back unto darkness rust. 

But thro' thee the threads of Hope and Love 

yhall run till thy vision be 
As mine in whose mighty Depths worlds move 

Nor fall from the Laws whose majesty 
Has measured to each its space." 

And still He weaves — the voice of His Loom 

Is sounding from star to star. — 
While man goes weighing the words of doom 

He reads in the haps that make or mar 
Tlie destinings of his race! 



LINGERING 

I lingered still when you were gone, 
When tryst and trust were o'er, 

While memory like a wounded swan 
In sorrow sung love's lore. 

1 lingered till the whippoorwill 

Had cried delicious pain 
Over the wild-wood — in its thrill 

I heard your voice again. 

66 



I lingered and the mellow breeze 
Blew to me sweetly dewed — 

Its touch awoke the sorceries 
Your last caresses brewed. 

But when the night with silent start 

Had sown her starry seed, 
The harvest which sprang in my heart 

Was loneliness and need. 



ONE CAME TO GOD'S RIGHT HAND 

One came to God's right hand — one shadowy 
Of sin, pain, death, and night. Christ — and me- 

seems 
A shudder stung his words — cried, " Dost thou see, 
Oh Father, dost thou see how light hath fled 
i^Yom heaven? Tell us, Almighty, who thus deems 
It naught to near thy throne? Alas, the dead 
Tho' they have diimk of Life's immortal tide, 
Stand steeped in blind amaze — and see, they fall 
As if smit down by dread remembrance!" . . . 
A thrall 

Of silence surging swept the hymn of pride 
From each song-seraph's lips far thro' the space 
Of stars whose course begins at Heaven's gates. 
Then God said, " Children — know ye not this face ? 
'Tis hers who thwarts me oft on earth — mad 

Fate's! " 

67 



THE CHILD GOD GAVE 

" Give me a little child 

To draw this dreary want out of my breast," 

I cried to God. 
"Give, for my days beat wild 
With loneliness that will not rest 
But under the still sod! " 

It came — with groping lips 

And little fingers stealing aimlessly 

About my heart. 
I was like one who slips 
A-sudden into ecstasy 
And thinks 'twill ne'er depart. 

" Soon he will smile," I said, 

" And babble baby love into my ears — 

How it will thrill!" 
I waited — Oh the dread, 
The clutching agony, the fears! — 
He was so strange and still. 

Did I curse God and rave 

When they came shrinkingly to tell me 'twas 

A witless child? 
No .... I .... I only gave 
One cry . . just one . . I think . . because . 
You know . . he never smiled. 



68 



WANDA 

I'm Wanda born 

Of the mirthful morn 
So the breezy red-buds whisper 

To the forest beech, 

Tho' I know that each 
Is but a gossipy lisper. 

I taunt the brook 

With his hair outshook 
O'er the weir so cool and mossy. 

And mock the crow 

As he peers below 
With a caw that's vain and saucy. 

Where the wahoo reds 

And the sumac spreads 
Gay plumes o'er the purple privet, 

I beg for a kiss 

Of the wind, tho' i wis 
Right well he never will give it. 

I hide in the nook 

And sunbeams look 
For me everywhere, like fairies. 

Then out I glide 

By the grey deer's side — 
Ha, ha, but he never tarries! 



On an aster bed 

I lay my head, 
In the meadow soft and soddy, 

When the sleepy noon 

Has begun to swoon 
And I grow, like the shadows, noddy. 

Then I fright the hare 

From his turfy lair 
And after him dart a volley 

Of song that stops 

Him under the copse 
In wonderment at my folly. 

If Autumn cries, 

" Be sad ! " and sighs 
Thro' her nun lips palely pouting, 

I laugh and leap 

To the woods and keep 
It wild with gleeing and routing. 

But when the sun 

Has almost spun 
A path to his far Golconda, 

I climb the hill 

And listen, still, 
While he calls me — "Wanda! Wanda! 



70 



And then I go 

To the valley— Oh, 
My dreams are sweeter than dreaming! 

All night they play 

O'er the blue, blue day, 
In delights that seem not seeming! 



MAKY 

I know, Lord, thou hast sent him- 
Thou art so good to me! — 
But thou hast only lent him, 
His heart's for thee! 

I dared — ^thy poor hand-maiden — 
JSot ask a prophet-child: 
Only a boy-babe laden 
For earth — and mild. 

But this one thou hast given 
Seems not for earth — ^or me! 
His lips flame truth from heaven. 
And vanity 

Seem all my thoughts and prayers 
When he but speaks thy Law — 
Out of my heart the tares 
Are torn by awe! 



71 



I cannot look upon him 
So strangely burn his eyes — 
Hath not some grieving drawn him 
From Paradise? 

For thee, for thee I'd live, Lord! 
Yet oft I almost fall 
Before him — Oh forgive, Lord, 
My sinful thrall! 

But e'en when he was nursing, 
A baby at my breast, 
-t seemed he was dispersing 
The world's unrest. 

Thou bad'st me call him " Jesus " 
And from our heavy sin 
I know he shall release us, 
From Sheol win. 

But, Lord, forgive! the yearning 
That he may sometimes be 
Like other children, learning 
Beside my knees, 

ur playing, prattling, seeking 
For help, — comes to my heart . . , 
Ah sinful. Lord, I'm speaking — 
How good thou art! 



72 



WORLDS 

Thrice have I dreamed 

I lived in a world 

Of men who said that life is sad. 

On every face 

Quivered the trace 

Of wrong — I near went mad. 

They builded towns, 

And fought for gain — 

Brother and brother pitted, till 

A thing called death 

Stifled their breath, 

And then — they grew quite still. 

Thrice did I dream 

This dream. There is 

Surely no world like that to see. 

There are no men. 

No towns — and then 

Surely death could not be. 

There is no world 

But this — of fields, 

Flowers and fields, and birds a-flit. 

And clouds that soar 

Silently o'er 

The sunny infinite. 



73 



OH WHEN SHE COMES! 

Oh when she comes across the breakers 
Tell her I am dead, 
And buried mid green meadow acres 
By the brooklet's bed! 

(But she'll not cross or bar or breaker; 

Under wind and wave, 
In shotted shroud the sailors make her 

Oh ! an ocean-grave ! ) 

And when she comes say I am waiting 

'Neath the ivy's twine; 
For other love would be as hating — 

She will die for mine. 

(In shotted shroud, but %vith another — 

Buried breast to breast! 
O not to father, aye, nor brother — 

But to her lover prest.) 

Ana say we'll hear the birds above us. 

Feel the tlowers grow. 
And listen when they speak — who love us — 

Of the long ago. 

(In shotted shroud bound with her lover, 
"VSniere the gray shark glides. 
She floats . . . and sinks . . . and floats: far 
over 
Sound the unsoothing tides!) 

74 



WILDINGS 

Cresses are wading 

The pools in the meadow valley! 

Or riding wind-rimples 

O'er crimples and dimples 
Of sunbeams sinking and softly fading 
In deeps where tne minnows dally! 

And violets are peeping 

LiKe wild little elves from under 

Each cranny and crevice 

At levies and bevies 
Of bees a-buzzing, a-swinging, a-seeping 
The clover-cups dry — O wonder! 

And bluets are dancing 

On downy may-beds of mosses! 

In sunlight and shadow 
So glad o', so glad o' 

The spring-birds over the runnel glancing, 
"Where the white dog- wood tosses! 

And I am wilder 

Than blossoms, or birds, or breezes! 

Joy-pulses are winging 

And singing, and singing 
My heart to love under heavens milder 
Than dreams of delirious eases! 



75 



WINTER TREES 

Lovingly upon the lifeless hill 

The trees have cast their robes of leafy brown. 
And shivering stand against the Winter's chill 

Like children o'er a mother stricken down 
By wildering Death. They lift bare arms in plead- 
ing 

Anguish up to the dismal gray above them, 
And moan against the wind whose rough unheed- 
ing 

Tells of no pity who will list and love them. 
Thro' the long day and longer night I hear 

Them dirge the air with waneless lamentation, 
See them sway blackly o'er the frozen bier 

Of her whose sleeping is their desolation. 
Thro' the long day and longer night — O Spring, 

Banish their misery with thy burgeoning! 

RESPITE 

How far — ^how far away my life has fled, 
Lured by the longing for oblivion. 
Into the March air where the mists hang dead 
Upon the hills — for want of sweetening sun. 
As is my heart, for one. 

No longer does it seem a lonely lair 
For gnawing agony and all the brood 
That track slain love. And not a cry or care 
For all that was, but in this solitude 
Finds ceasing as it would. 
76 



"Forget! " the fainting wind breathed voicelessly; 
"Forget! " echoed the silence in its wake. 
And I forgot, contented but to see 
A cloud fade into film, a black-bird take 
Flight to a distant brake. 

NOCTURNE 

(In the forest.) 

Wood, Wind, Night, 

And rapturous spell of moonlight laving 

Meadow and hill and heaven — 

Cloud, Star, Flight 

Of silvery gloiy paving 

bhadowy glade and glen with levin — 

Dream, Desire, Love, 

Dwelling Infinite breathing boundless balm, 

Ye lilt me — lift me, away, above. 

Into nepenthean calm! 

(By the sea) 

Tiaes of Life and Death, 

Sea of Oblivion, 

Wave that I am, by the breath 

Of a moment heaved to the sun — 

Storm, Surge, W^orld, 

Rock at whose feet I am hurled — 

Ye have worn me, and torn me, 

But the wings of peace that are mine 

Have upborne me. 

To Deeps but hope can divine! 

(On the mountains, at dawn.) 
77 



Peaks of Eternity, 

Moated around by the River of Life, 

And sunned by Divinity, 

^nd songed by the Lyre, 

God's Heart, a-iire 

With the thrill of o'ercoming strife — 

Time, Death, Fate, 

Driven beyond its Gate^ — 

Ye may haunt me, but not daunt me, 

I await the Dawn! — I await! 



THE WANING OF DAY 

Lost in the lustering gold of sunset 

are woodland and hill, 
Ringing the dusk comes the quavery 

cry of the whip-po-will. 
Stealthily over the east like a priest 

steps the night to light 
The skies that enshrine the way unto Paradise, 

Now it is done — and no more can the 

forest's gladdening green 
Thro' the sombrous veils of violet 

mistfulness be seen. 
Mysticly in the calm moves a Psalm 

that no ear can hear 
But One, for whose joy there is hymning from sun 
unto sun. 

78 



LONNIE O'CLAIR 

The meadows roll sweet 
And the brook calls cheery 
Down i' the sumac dells^ 

But they're no like my lealands 
Strewn with the seasands, 
Over the ocean swells, my dearie — 
Over the ocean swells! 

The church mun be deckt 
And the bells peal bonnie 
When ye are made my bride. 
Ihen we'll hie to my lealands 
Ked with the seasands. 
Where the white seagulls glide, my Lonnie- 
Where the white seagulls glide. 

But the nor'-east blast 
Blew icy and cruel 
Over my darling's breast. 
For I had na more money 
To keep the cot sunny — 
God would no' hear my best, for fuel. 
God would no' hear my best! 

So I mun fare back 
Where the meadows golden 
Under the Autumn day, 

Where my Lonnie sang merry, 
The Lark of the ferry — 
Would I'd no' ta'en her away, so bolden, 
Would I'd no' ta'rn her away! 

79 



ADELIL 

Proud Adelil! Proud Adelil! 
Why does she lie so cold? 

(I made her shrink, I made her reel, 
I made her white lids fold.) 

We sat at banquet, many maids. 
She like a Valkyrie. 

(I hated the glitter of her braids, 
1 hated her blue eyes glee ! ) 

In emerald cups was poured the mead ; 
Icily blew the night. 

(But tears unshed and woes that bleed 
Brew bitterness and spite.) 

" A goblet to my love ! " she cried, 
" Prince where the sea- winds fly." 
(Her love! — it was for that he died, 
And for it she should die ! ) 

She lifted the cup and drank — she saw 
A heart within its lees. 

(I laughed like the dead who feel the thaw 
Of summer in the breeze.) 

They looked upon her stricken still. 
And sudden they grew appalled. 
('• It is thy lover's heart! I shrill 
As the sea-crow to her called.) 

80 



Palely she took it — did it give 
Ease tliere against her breast? 

(Dead — dead she swooned, but I cannot live, 
Ana dead I shall not rest.) 



THE YOUTH AND THE GOD 
1 

She lay by the river dead, 

A broken reed in her hand, 
The nymph whom an idle god had wed 

Ana led from her maidenland. 

The god was the great god Jove, 

Two notes would the bent reed blow; 

The one was sorrow, the other love 
Enwove with a woman's woe. 

She lay by the river dead, 

And he at feasting forgot. 
The gods shall they be disquieted 

By dread of a mortal's lot! 



A youth with a weary foot, 
With eyes of deep loss and vow, 

Upon his shoulder a tuneless lute, 
The moo't of death on his brow, 
8i 



Had followed her fast and far, 

By love led invisibly, 
At last by the river's rushy bar 

The mar of the god to see! 

But he, did he leave her so — 

A prey on the sandy sod? 

He urned her ashes with heart a- throe 

To woe — ah, shame to the god! 

ON THE MOOR 



I met a child upon the moor 
A-wading down the heather; 

She put her hand into my own. 
We crossed the fields together. 

I led her to her father's door — 
A cottage mid the clover. 

I left her and the world grew poor 
To me, a cnildless rover. 



2 



I met a maid upon the moor, 
The morrow was her wedding. 

Love lit her eyes with lovelier hues 
Than the eve-star was shedding. 



82 



fc>ne looked a sweet good-bye to me, 
And o'er the stile went singing. 

Down all the lonely night I heard 
But bridal bells a-ringing. 



I met a mother on the moor, 

By a new grave a-praying. 
Ihe happy swallows in the blue 

Upon the winds were playing. 

"Would I were in his grave," I said, 
" And he beside her standing ! " 

There was no heart to break if death 
For me had made demanding. 



OUTCAST 

I did not fear, 

But crept close up to Christ and said, 

"Is he not here?" 

They drew me back — 

The Seraphs who had never bled 

Of weary lack — 

But still I cried, 

With torn robe, clutching at his feet, 

•'Dear Christ! he died 



83 



" So long ago! 

Is he not here? Three days, unfleet 

As mortal flow 

Of time, I've sought — 
Till Heaven's amaranthine ways 
Seem as sere naught!" 

A grieving stole 

Up from His heart and waned the gaze 

Uf His clear soul 

Into my eyes. 

" He is not here," troubled He sighed. 

" For none who dies 

" Beliefless may 

Bend lips to this sin-healing Tide, 

And live alway." 

Then darkness rose 

Within me, and drear bitterness. 

Out of its throes 

I moaned, at last, 

" Let me go hence ! Take off the dress. 

The charms thou hast 

'•Around me strown! 
Beliefless too am I without 
His love — and lone! " 

Unto the Gate 

They led me, tho' with pitying doubt. 

I did not wait 

84 



But stepped across 

Its portal, turned not once to heed 

Or know my loss. 

Inen my dream broke, 

And with it every loveless creed — 

Beneath love's stroke. 



THE EMPTY CROSS 

The eve of Golgotha had come, 

And Christ lay shrouded in the garden's tomb: 

Along the olives, Oh how dumb. 

How sad the sun incarnadined the gloom! 

The hill grew dim — the pleading cross 
Reached empty arms toward the closing gate. 
Jerusalem oh count thy loss! 
Oh hear ye! hear ye! ere it be too late! 

Reached bleeding arms — But how in vain! 
The murmurous multitude within the wall 
Already had forgot his pain — 
Tomorrow would forget the cross — and all! 

They knew not Rome, before its sign. 

Bending her brow bound with the nations threne, 

Would sweep all lands from Nile to Rhine 

In servitude unto the Nazarene. 

85 



Nor knew that millions would forsake 
Ancestral shrines great with the glow of time, 
And lifting up its token shake 
The aeons with love's thrill or battle's crime. 

With empty arms aloft, it stood; 
Ah Scribe and Pharisee ye builded well! 
The cross emblotted with his blood 
Mounts o'er men's highest Hope against earth' 
hell! 

BEWITCHED 

Why do 1 babble of bitter chills — 

And icy trees — and snowy fallows? 

Wliy do I shudder as twilight spills 

A ghostly gray and the bent moon sallows 

The moor with her wicked name? 

Why do the gibbering croons of the hag 

In her hut by the wood 

Go muttering, muttering in my blood — 

Till the hoot of the owl on the snag 

Of a tomb, breaks out of the gioom 

Like the wail of a witch's name? 

Ugh, it is drawing my feet away — 
The road's a-gone! — the moonlet's sunken! 
What shall I do an it comes to fray 
With fiends invisible, wild and drunken — 
i^iends on a churchless fell ! . . . 

86 



Ha, is it cracking of ice in the bog 

That is clutching my throat. 

Or devils a-gnawing the widow's shoat? 

By the Cross of the Christ, there's a fog 

That is black as — U-r-r! — at my back! — 

They are dragging me . . down to . . hell! 

IF THIS SHOULD NEVER END 

If this should never end — 
This wandering in oblivious mood 
Along a rutless road that leads 
From wood to deeper wood — 
'This crunching with unheedful foot 
Acorns, I think, and -svithered leaves. 
Perhaps a rotten root — 

If this should never end — 

This seeing with insentient eyes 

Something that seems like earth, and too. 

Like overbending skies — 

This feeling — what? that time is space, 

And space is time, and both a Glass 

In which Life sees her facer — 

If this should never end — 

'ihe road, the wandering, and the feel 

Of dead infinities that seem 

From nothingness to steal 

And thro my being move — 

Would it much matter, love? 

87 



IF 



If grasses were growing 

And flowers were blowing, 

If leaves were lilting above the weir, 

If birds were wooing 

With day-long cooing — 

I would not say that winter with bare 

Brown fields is here, 

So sweet is the air — so sweet the air! 

If life lived under 

The heaven's wonder 

Had less of rue and of sorrow's ache. 

If lips were kinder 

And hearts were blinder 

To ill than good, and quicker to give 

Of love than take — 

How sweet 'twere to live — how sweet to live! 



SUNSET LOVERS 

Upon how many a hill. 

Across how many a field, 

Beside how many a river's whispery flowing, 

They stand with eyes a-thrill, 

And hearts of day-rue healed. 

Gazing, Oh wistful sun, upon thy going. 



88 



They have forgotten life, 

Forgotten sunless death, 

Desire is gone — is it not gone forever? 

No memory of strife 

Have tney, or pain-sick breath, 

No hopes to fear or fears hope cannot sever. 

Silent the gold steals down 
The west, and mystery 

Moves deeper in their hearts and settles darker. 
'Tis faded — the day's crown, 
But strange and shadowy 

They see the Unseen as night falls stark and 
starker. 

Like priests whose altar fires 

Are spent, immoveable. 

They srand, in awful ecstasy uplifted. 

Zephyrs awake tree-lyres, 

Ine starry deeps are full. 

Earth with a mystic majesty is gifted. 

Ah sunset lovers, tho 

Time were but pulsing Pain, 

And death no more than its eternal ceasing. 

Would you not choose the throe. 

Hold the oblivion vain. 

To have beheld so many days' releasing? 



89 



FULFILLMENT 

A- bask in the mellow beauty of the ripening sun, 
Sad with the lingering sense of summer's purpose 

done, 
The cut fields, crisply seared, stretch from me one 

by one. 
Along the creek. 

The corn-stooks drop their shadows down the fal- 
low hill, 

Wearing autumnal warmth the farm sleeps by the 
mill. 

Around its heavy eaves the smoke hangs blue and 
still- 
Life's flow is weak. 

Along the weedy roads and lanes I walk, or pause, 
Pondering a fallen nut or quirking crow whose 

caws 
Seem with a prehuman hintings fraught or ancient 
awes 
Of forest-deeps. 

Of forest deeps the pale-face hunter never trod. 
Nor Indian, with the silent stealth of Nature shod. 
Deeps tense with the timelessness and solitude of 
God 
Who never sleeps. 



90 



Here many times has Autumn, on her harvest way, 
Gathered again into the earth leaf, fruit, and 

spray. 
Here many times dwelt rueful as she dwells today, 
The while she reaps. 

WILDNESS 

To drift with drifting clouds. 

And blow with the blow of breezes. 

To ripple with waves and murmur with eaves. 

To soar, as the seamew pleases! 

To dip with the dipping sails, 
And burn with the burning heaven — 
My life! my soul! for the infinite roll 
Of a day to wildness given! 

DESIRE'S QUEST 

It is not soaring fame I've sought so long — 

iNor lowly love — nor peace. 
And if still sighingly I grope among 
All days and nights for one to bring surcease, 

I know not why I seek, 
And — if 'twere found — today would seem less 
bleak. 

It is not something lost thro lorn mistake — 
Nor ever hath been mine. 

91 



I shall not find it for my searching's sake 
Or for God's pity of my tears' hot brine, 

But for some silent chance — 
As one finds gold within a ruined manse. 

And when 'tis found I'll lay it in my heart — 

Among old joys and pains — 
To look upon — a thing whicn in life's mart 
I sought unrestingly and bought with gains 

Saved from despair's sluice, 
Nor shall men know it hath been of no use! 

AN UNLOVED DAY 

Aye there were daisies wading wanton down 
Into the brook, and bluets left of May 
For idling June to pluck with her hot hand. 
The ivy too had wreathed a cooling crown 
About the broken locust's brow, and hay 
Was tall upon the clover's odorland. 

Never had drowsy Time breathed sweeter houri 
Or wilding branches tangled shadier bowers. 
Never did bee suck blooms of soother honey 
Or hills float under skies more softly fair. 
But I who had loved other days less sunny 
Loved not this day, for all its beauteous air. 

It was because a cheating whisper came 
That soulless Nature is God's other name. 
92 



FORGETTING 

All day I've bent my heart beneath the yoke 
Of goading Toil, remembering to forget, 
To hush my lips of thy first kiss that woke 
Me in elysian love one word has broke — 
One stinging word of severance and regret. 
All day I've blotted from my eyes thy face. 
But now with eventide it comes again. 
And memories into my darkened soul 
Rush as the stars to yonder heaven's space. 
To-morrow's fiooding-o'er will quench them — then 
Once more I must forget, see but Life's goal 
Erewhile so green, now with sere laurel hung. 
And so 'twill be till piteous peace is wrung 
Out of the sodden hours I strive among, 

THRO THE NIGHT 

I know that forest hills and harvests lie 
Around me under the sable sway of night. 
I hear the hushing whippoorwill's lone cry 
Tho bird and tree are darkened from my sight. 
Still the brook lisps along its bed, I know. 
And still above the clouds are stars a-glow. 

With mystery my heart is shrouded o'er. 
Hidden are faith and daily-begged belief. 
Tho far adrift on sadness more, ah more, 
I know there is a haven for all grief! 
Beneath the bursting surge of life I feel 
Eternity's untroubled v. aters steal. 

93 



ETERNAL LOVERS 

Between the outstretched limbs of that perduring 

Sphinx 
Whom men name Time; upon the gathered sands 
Of aeons that have lifted mighty hands 
Around her but to crumble into the sinks 
Of Oblivion's desert; sit eternally 
Two lovers, whom the winds call Life and Death. 
She, tremulous as is the moonful sea, 
Entwines her amorous arms warm with the breath 
Of soothless blood about his umber form. 
And, gazing in the unfathomed night that fills 
His closeless eyes, until their mystery thrills 
Her with all bliss of passion that may storm 
Breast mortal or immortal, wildly cries, 
"I love thee, love thee, love thee. Death! Within 
Thine arms are ended all my woes and sighs 
For what shall nver be, — desires that din 
My heart with loud despairs!" And he, in wan 
Tomb-tone, replies, "Peace, love ! thou shalt forever 
Feel my cool clasp around thee, and withdrawn 
From earth thy eyes shall drown in mine, nor ever 
Of easing fail till suns no more shall dawn." 

OH GO NOT OUT UPON THE STORM 

Oh go not out upon the storm, 
Go not, my sweet, to Swalchie pool! 
A witch tho she be dead may charm 
Thee and befool. 
94 



A wild night 'tis! her lover's moan 
Down under ooze and salty weed 
She'll make thee hear: and weeping groan 
Till thou Shalt heed. 

And it will suck upon thy heart — 
The sorcery within her cry — 
Till madness out of thee upstart. 
And rage to die. 

She laughed her lover unto death. 
Upon the marge his chill hand lay. 
"Ha, ha! to hell I sent his wraith!" 
Did she not say? 

And from his finger strive to draw 
The ring that bound him to her spell? 
But on her closed his hand — she saw . . 
Oh who can tell! 

And tho she strove — tho she did wail. 
The dead hand held her cold and fast: 
The tide crawled in o'er rock and swale, 
To her at last. 

Down in the pool where she was swept 
He holds her — Oh go not a-near! 
For none has heard her cry but wept 
And died that year. 



95 



SEARCHING DEATH'S DARK 

When Autumn's melancholy robes the land 

With sighing, and rueful fading mystical 

Of other years moves thro the sadd'ning fields, 

I turn unto this meadow of the dead, 

To brood among the mounds red-strewn with drifts 

Of twigs and leaves stormed from October trees, 

And wonder if my resting shall ue dug 

Beneath this cedar's moan or under the sway 

Of yonder cypress, lair of winds that rove 

Like Valkyries sent from Valnalla's court 

In search of worthy slain. 

And sundry times 
With questioning I tease the enurned dead 
Of their degree. Of him whose boding eye 
But thrice three moons ago was tear-bedimmed 
With ecstasy of gazing to the hills, 
I ask, "If in the grave 'tis sweetlier 
To feel the halcyon of Nature's flow, 
Or standing here where gleam and shadow fleet 
Like fancies o'er her face, to hear in vain 
The Babel voice of Time's slow-passing dream?" 
Of her who at the wind would start and list 
Her 'Love', she said, call from this ivied vault, 
Until the mom they found her draped in death 
Fast clinging to its yieldless bars, I seek, 
*'If life tho it be overyearning pain 
For one beloved, hath not less leaden woe 
Than weights the changeless peace of hushen 
tombs?" 

96 



And by the shaft of one whom Justice chose 

To hold her scale, upon whose brow her care 

Of right had wrought its dark phylacteries, 

I whisper, "Was it not strange to find Beyond 

No Judge, or else one who hath bidden Death 

Pour out the chrism of Immortality 

Into each human heart whose light is spent?" 

But by the slabless and unflowered clay 

Over this little child, my questioning 

Is stilled, and — like some witless mother who. 

Crazed of it, hath forgot her cruel grief — 

I only sing dim lullaoies allured 

By memory echoes out of Childhood land. 

Nor do my askings fall on the chill voids 

Of unavailing silence. Sometimes a voice 

Of Autumn wind blows answer, or it leaps 

Bewildering from a marble seraph's face. 

And sometimes from the unspeakable deeps of 

gold 
That ebb along the west, revealings wing 
And tremor like etherial tongues unskilled 
Of human speech around my heart, until 
Youth, age, life, death, yea even earth's all, me- 

seems. 
Are but wild moments wakened in that Soul, 
To whom infinities are as a span, 
Eternities as bird-flights o'er the sun. 
And worlds as sands blown from Sahara's wilds 
Into the sea . . . 

Then twilight bells ring back 

97 



My wandered spirit from the wilderness 
Of Mystery, whence none may find a path 
To the Unknown, and like one who upborne 
Has steered the unmeasured summer skies until 
Their calm seems God, I turn transfigured home. 

TO TELL HOW I LOVE IT 

To tell how I love it — the drifting day 

Mellow o'er creek and meadow. 
The breezes hasting to tease the hill 

With fright of the near cloud-shadow. 
The lilies fledging the woodward way 

With singing gold, and the rill, — 
To tell how I love it — A-lack-a-day, 

My heart, you never will! 

To tell how I love it — I should be Pan. 

Thou, with an ivy fillet, 
A dryad fleeing till Cupid's dart 

Stayed thee beside some rillet 
Where Cythera's groves around should fan. 

And amaranth buds upstart. 
To tell how I love it — you never can! 

Oh, oh! 'tis vain, my heart! 

THE DYING POET 

Swing in thy splendor, O silent sun, 
Drawing my heart with mee over the west! 
Done is its day as thy day is done. 
Fallen its quest! 

98 



Swoon into purple and rose — then sink 
Sink to arise again out of the dawn. 
But for me look not — thro the dark link 
Of death I'll be drawn. 

Sunk? art thou sunken? how great was life! 
I like a child could cry for it again. 
Cry for its beauty, pang, fleeting, and strife, 
Its women, its men! 

Ah how I drained it with love and delight! 
Opened its heart with the magic of grief! 
Reaped every season — its day and its night! 
Loved every sheaf! 

Aye, not a meadow my step has trod. 
Never a flower swung sweet to my face, 
Never a heart that was touched of God, 
But taught me its grace. 

Rapture or sadness, what matter, I thrilled! 
Sadness or rapture, I care not, 'twas life! 
Life with the myriad world instilled, 
Aurorally rife! 

OfT from my lids then a moment yet. 
Fingering Death, for again I must see 
Miraged by memory all that I met 
Under Time's lee. 



99 



There! I'm a child again — fair, so fair! 
Under the eyes does a marvel not bum? 
Speak they not vision, song, frenzy to dare, 
That still in me yearn? . . . 

Youth! my wild youth! O blood of my heart. 
Still you can answer with swirling the thought! 
Still like the mountain-born rapids outdart 
Joyous, distraugnt! . . . 

Love, and her face again! there by the wood! 
Come thou invisible Dark with thy mask! 
Shall I not learn if she lives? and could 
I more of thee ask? . . . 

Turn me away from the ashen west^ 
Where love's sad planet unveils to the dusk. 
Something is stealing like light from my breast — 
Soul from its husk. . . . 

Soft ! . . . Where the dead feel the buried dea<.l. 
Where the high hermit-bell hourly tolls, 
Bury me, close to the haunting tread 
Of life that o'errolls. 



TO TPIE SEA 

Art thou enraged, sea, with the blue peace 
Of heaven, that thou dost lift thine armed waves, 
Thy billowing rebellion 'gainst its ease, 
And with Tartarean mutter from cold caves. 
From shuddering profundities where shapes 
Of awe glide thro entangled leagues of ooze, 
Dost hoot thy watery omens evermore, 
And evermore thy moanings interfuse 
With seething necromancy and mad lore? 

Or, dost thou labor with the drifting bones 
Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist, 
Within whose stormy cruicible the stones 
Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist. 
Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat? 
With immemorial chanting to the moon, 
And cosmic incantation dost thou crave 
Kest to be found not till thy wild be strewn 
A frigid desert round the dead earth's grave? 

Thy spirit with immensity is blind. 

With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn, 

Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind 

Is night and earth-quake,shaDeless shame and soorn 

Of the o'er-mounting birth of Harmony. 

Bound in thy dragon limbs that sprawl the earth 

With foamy writhing and lierce-panted tides. 

It frets like Fate in torment with the dearth 

Of black disaster and destiiiction's strides. 

lOl 



Oh how thou dost drive silence from the world, 

incarnate Motion of all mystery! 

Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are 

hurled 
By thy tempestuous Ghost's bleak Fantasy 
And desolate Apocalypse of death. 
Oh how thou dost drive silence from the world, 
With emerald overflowing, waste on waste 
Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled 
'Gainst isles and continents and airs o'erspaced! 

A flashing susurration felt perchance 
By sister-seas of Lyra from whose chords 
The Harpist of the worlds plucks strains to en- 
trance 
To silvery law disorbited star-hordes. 
Or, maybe, shrank to whisper it is heard 
Upon that destined sphere where they are fled 
Who slough the slavery of prisoning Time. 
And sweet 'tmay seem — embalmed with all dead 
Delights and sorrows memory can mime. 

Thou art some frustrate Hope of the Unknown, 

Gathered from primal mist and firmament; 

A surging Shape of Life's unfathomed moan. 

Whelming humanity with fears unmeant. 

Yet do I love thee, aye, above all fear, 

And loving thee unconquerably trust 

The Runes, that from thy ageless surfing start, 

Shall read not When revealed "Dust unto Dust." 

But "Soul unto Soul — Heart to immortal Heart." 

I02 



BROKEN HARMONY 

At the tender tryst of night and day, 
The chanting hour of the whip-poor-will, 
When the rivei-'s ripples weary of play 

Were husht on the sands. 
And the glow-worms swum the dusk of the hill 

In tremorous bandSj 
We stood mid the mounded hay. 

A dove mourned mellow peace by the gate, 
Rest drifted down from the deep'ning skies, 
And love like the evening's odor-weight 

Steeped meadow and wood. 
But we looked into each other's eyes, 

With angry blood. 
And saw but the storm of hate. 



STORM TWILIGHT 

Tossing, twirling, swept by the wind, 

Beaten abaft by the rain. 
The swallows high in the sodden sky 

Circle oft and again. 

They rise and sink and drift and swing, 

Twitterless in the chill, 
A-haste, for stark is the coming dark 

Over the wet of the hill. 
103 



Wildly, swiftly, at last they stream 

Into their chimney home. 
A livid gash in the west, a crash — 

Then silence, sadness, gloam. 

CALL TO YOUR MATE BOB-WHITE 

call to your mate, bob-white, bob-white. 

And I wiU call to mine. 
Call to her by the meadow gate. 

And I will call by the pine. 

Tell her the sun is hid, bob-white, 

The windy wheat sways west. 
Whistle again, call clear and run 

To lure her out of her nest. 

For when to the copse she comes, shy bird, 

With Mary down the lane 
I'll walk, in the dusk of locust tops. 

And be her lover again. 

Aye we will forget our hearts are old. 

And that our hair is gray. 
We'll kiss as we kissed at pale sunset 

That summer's halcyon day. 

That day, can it fade? . . ah bob, bob-white. 

Still calling, calling still? 
We're coming, a-coming, bent and weighed, 

But glad with the old love's thrill. 

104 



AN ITALIAN IN FKANCE 

Oh . . . there was love in her heart — no doubt 
of it— 
Under the anger. 
But see what came out of it! 

Not a knave, he! A Eomeo rhyme-smatterer, 
Cloaking in langour 
And heart-ache to flatter her. 

Just as a woman will — even the best of them — 
She yielded — brittle. 
God spare me the rest of them! 

Kisses were all — she swore! — that he had of her. 
Zounds! was it little? 
She thought 'twas not bad of her. 

Said I would lavish a burning hour-full 
On any grissette. 
A parry! — and powerful! 

But — "You are mine, and blood is inflammable, 
Flaunty Lissette!" — 
My rage was undammable . . . 

Could a stilletto's one prick be prettier? 
Look at the gaping. 
No? — then you're her pitier! 



105 



Pah, she's the better, and I . . I'm your 
prisoner. 
Loose me the strapping — 
I'll lay one more kiss on her. 



TO A WAEBLEK 

'Beauty! all — all — is beauty!' 
Was ever a bird so wrong! 
'No young in the nest, no mate, no duty!' 
Ribald! is this your song! 

Glad it is ended, are you. 
The Spring and its nuptial fear? 
And freedom is better than love? beware you 
There will be May next year! 

'Beauty! all — beauty! beauty!' 
Ah — wait till the winter comes! 
Till kestrel and hungry kite seek booty. 
And there are so few crumbs! 

Wait? nay fling it unbidden, 
The false little song you prate! 
Too sweet are its fancies to be chidden, 
Ev'n of the rudest fate! 



io6 



HATE NOT LOVE 

Think you 'twas love that noosed us — you and me ? 
I say 'twas hate, that wore love's wanting eyes! 
Hate that I could not tear away the lies 
Wrapping you in their poison sorcery! 
Hate that for you I could not open skies 
Where Beauty lives of her own loveliness, 
That God would give me not omnipotence 
To purge and mould anew your soul's numb sense! 
Aye hate that I could love you not tho love 
Pent in me ached with passion-born distress. 
Till thro unfathomable dark my heart 
Seemed sinking from the heaven it saw above! 
Think you 'twas love? and hate that rent apart? 
I swear 'twas hate that bound us heart to heart! 

SUNDERED 

God who can bind the stars eternally 
With but a breath of spirit speech, a thought: 
Who can within earth's arms lay the mad sea 
Unseverably, and count it as sheer nought — 
With his All-might can bind not you and me. 

Tho we were pressed heart unto burning heart 
By this thrice-fating spell that over-thralls. 
Still would our souls unhelpably apart 
Stand aliens beating fierce against the walls 
Of dark unsympathy that 'tween us start. 
107 



stand aliens, aye! and would tho' we should meet, 
Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births, 
Upon some world where Time cannot repeat 
The feeblest syllable that once was earth's. 

WHO IS HE WILL FOLLOW ME 

O who is he will follow me. 

With a singing, 
Down sunny roads where windy odes 

Of the wood are ringing! 

Where leaves are tossed from branches bossed 

With a tangle 
Of vine and brier that clamber higher 

But to vault and dangle. 

who is he! His eye must be 

As a lover's 
To leap and woo the chicory's blue 

In the hazel's hovers. 

His hope must dance like radiance 

O'er the shadows 
Of clouds that fling their threatening 

On the stubbly meadows. 

Oh who is he! For Autumn's glee 

And her laughter 
From his lips and heart will quell all smart 

Of before and after. 
io8 



THE LYRIC LIBRARY 



POEMS OF THE TOWN 

Ernest McGaffey 

ONE DAY AND ANOTHER 

Madison Cawein 

SONG-SURF 
Gale Young Rice 

IN THE HARBOR OF HOPE 

Mary Elizabeth Blake 

Other Volumes in Preparation 

Each Volume i6 mo 
Flexible Leather $1.25 



RICHARD G BADGER & CO 

(Incorporatedj 

Publishers Boston 



